


The Dysfunctional Luthor Family

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Father-Son Relationship, Meta, Mother-Son Relationship, Nonfiction, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:31:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both of Lex’s parents are abusive towards him. Yes, <i>both</i> Lillian and Lionel. It’s canon.</p><p>This is not a cheery subject, and not a fic, so if you’re not up for it, don’t read it, ‘kay? This is the only warning you'll get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

~*~*~*~*~*~

Let’s get right into the meat of it, shall we?

Starting with Lillian, and what happened to Julian:

In [Memoria](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Memoria), Lex remembers Lillian suffocating his baby brother Julian in his crib. This was **not** [postpartum depression](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_depression) as most people seem to put forth, however -- a more accurate diagnosis would be [postpartum psychosis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_psychosis). Postpartum depression presents symptoms such as hopelessness, a feeling of being overwhelmed, sleep and eating disturbances, exhaustion, emptiness, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy at taking care of the child, and so forth, and in the worst cases results in _suicide_. Postpartum psychosis presents either manic symptoms (euphoria, overactivity, flight of ideas, increased sociability, disinhibition, irritability, violence, delusions) or depressive symptoms (depression with delusions, mutism, stupor), and in the worst cases results in _infanticide_. Lillian did the latter -- killed her child -- not the former; she never tries to commit suicide -- to the contrary, she tries to stay alive as long as possible when she comes down with [cancer](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Vows) later in the Smallville timeline, before she [dies from heart failure](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Luthors). Her [earlier rant to Lionel](http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6843) in the episode suggests an "explanation" for why she kills Julian, and also suggests that she’s at least somewhat delusional: she tells Lionel that she knows he would raise Julian and Lex to fight against each other for his affection (possibly not too far off the mark), and that this will turn them into monsters (um...). So it’s pretty clear that she believes that killing Julian is the only way to save him from becoming a monster (yeah, no), and when Lex catches her just after the fact, she tells him that Julian is happy now (...). She presents as having the depressive symptoms of postpartum psychosis. (Note that postpartum depression can be aggravated by a lack of support in childrearing (seen in the episode, Lionel trying to force Lillian to spend time with Julian by dismissing the nurse (Rachel Dunlevy)) and marital violence (which Lionel most certainly does), while postpartum psychosis is linked to genetic factors, which might partially explain why people jump to the former ‘explanation’ rather than the latter one.)

Lex seems to have been mostly raised by his nanny (...up until age 13). Pamela Jenkins was hired to look after Lex at a young age, and Lionel forced her to leave the household in 1993 after Lillian died; he ‘drove her away’. In [Crush](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Crush) (1x19), Lex runs into her at his mother’s grave, and over the course of the episode we learn that he was very angry with her for disappearing after his mother died, and that he felt abandoned by her -- he hadn’t known why she’d left. In the episode, she has cancer and dies at the end. The way she and Lex interact in the episode, and the feelings of anger and betrayal at his ‘abandonment’ by her don’t come across as simply a caretaker and charge; it comes across as a _lot_ more familial. He treats Pamela like a second mother...

...probably because his "first mother" was so abusive (...along with his father, but we’ll get to that later). This is the thing that makes me really mad, that canon just glosses over, but that fits so (heartbreakingly) well with Lex’s personality and his disastrous relationships with women. Whenever Lex talks about Lillian, he says and acts like he thinks she’s a saint, or some kind of angel. ...Admittedly, she just might be, compared to Lionel, **but that’s really not saying much**. That fact that Lex thinks this is the god’s-honest truth, though, when she was _in actuality_ badly abusive towards him, makes me want to hurl.

The evidence? Read on:

Lillian shows Lex a possible future in [Lexmas](http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6877) that ends in Lana’s death and basically tells him that he should take what little happiness he can get, when and where he can get it. (This is a very twisted, abusive presentation here. Why would anyone show someone they were trying to save, and have choose a different path, the horrible death of someone who would or could be their spouse, a death they couldn’t stop from happening, and claim that this was a happy thing that they should want? Or claim that she was showing him "a better life", one "full of love"? One would expect that she could’ve chosen an earlier point before this, for example at the second child’s birth (which she survived) rather than the third, if she actually wanted him to choose that different path. Lillian didn’t. _This is abusive._ ) Your mileage may vary with this one, but it’s clear from the episode (and later ones) that Lex takes it to heart. This implies that, even if this wasn’t actually Lillian’s ghost that visited him, that he believes that _this is something that she would do if it had been her_.

In [Void](http://tvmegasite.net/prime/shows/smallville/transcripts/season5/5-17.shtml) (5x17), she tells Lex that he chose the path that will hurt, that he’s going to murder a lot of people, references Cassandra’s vision in Hourglass (1x06) [](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Cassandra_Carver%27s_vision) of a field full of flowers withering to bones under in a rain of blood that stains Lex completely red as he smiles (which Lex didn’t see), which is obviously so cryptic that he doesn’t even really understand what she’s talking about, and then -- instead of trying to give him some actually useful advice -- tells him that it would be better for everyone if she just stayed with her (read: died and stayed dead), right before Chloe revives him. Lex starts out skeptical and thinking he’s hallucinating at first, but the interaction with her quickly makes it clear that he’s taking her seriously. The fact that she almost acts like she’s taunting him for making ‘the wrong choice’ in Lexmas doesn’t exactly have her come across smelling like roses; neither does the fact that she reaches for him like she’s going to try and kill him and/or keep him dead, right before he comes back to life.

In [Fracture](http://tvmegasite.net/prime/shows/smallville/transcripts/season7/7-12.shtml) (7x12), when Clark does his brain-diving into a comatose, shot-in-the-head Lex to try and find out where an amnesiac Kara is, he runs across a memory of a very young (read: younger than nine, still has hair) Lex involving a fight between him and his father -- in which Lionel basically grabs Lex and shakes him, then throws him into a table, until he finally tells Lionel that he saw his mother snooping around in his (Lionel’s) briefcase (physical abuse of his child) -- and a fight between Lionel and Lillian (over Veritas) -- at the beginning of which she tells Lionel to let go of Lex, and at the end of which Lionel throws her to the floor (physical abuse of his wife) -- and then a fight between Lex and Lillian -- in which he apologizes for telling Lionel the truth, after he’d seen his mother doing it and she had told him not to tell his father anything (not good, pulling the kid into the middle of the issue), and Lillian pretty much blames Lex outright for her getting caught out by Lionel over it ("Don’t Lex. You’ve done enough.") (mental and emotional abuse of her child). Lillian leaves him lying there on the floor, crying after her not to go, not to leave him alone (emotional withdrawal from her child). She acts coldly throughout the memory.

What this all boils down to is that, every time we actually see scenes in which Lillian appears in Smallville, Lex’s mother acts coldly to Lex every single time, is obviously mentally and emotionally abusive to him, and she doesn’t actually ever try and help him.

Yet Lex -- and through Lex, the Smallville universe in general -- always talks of Lillian in a positive light, and is the first to say that she loved him. (This is endemic, a good bad-example of this is [articles like this one](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Lillian_Luthor). They take what is said as truth, and what scenes are shown as the outliers; when it comes to emotional and mental abuse, however, the abuser’s actions and words towards their victim are far more indicative of the actual state of things as they really are, not the victim’s words of 'explanation' excusing them after the fact.) Believe it or not, this reaction (the belief that their abusive parents actually do love them in a healthy way) is not off-the-norm for emotionally and mentally abused children, and this unhealthy belief can, and usually does, persist for a very long time. Generally, this is because the abused child believes that they deserve whatever their parents do to them, that it is somehow their (read: the child’s) fault that their parent(s) treat them this way, and that they (the child) is the one doing something wrong and needing to be punished for it. It is also much harder for the child to believe the contrary, or even recognize the abuse for what it actually is, because it’s not as easy to identify (or talked about nearly as much) as physical abuse. Physical abuse, outside of rape, will heal much more readily than emotional abuse. Emotional and mental abuse severely damages the self-esteem and the thought processes of the person (child or adult) being abused; that isn’t something someone can "heal" from like a physical wound, _especially_ not when they’re raised that way as a child. The effects of the abuse also generally aren’t able to be resolved in an entirely healthy manner unless the abused child gets (read: seeks out) some really good psychological help, either as a child or as an adult (...though generally this has to happen as an adult, once they’re away from their abusive parent, or parents). People who are emotionally and/or mentally abused tend to stay stuck in that abusive relationship, and that mindset, unless something very drastic occurs. (Generally, only one of two things happens: the abused person leaves the relationship, or they die.) Children who are abused are also far more likely to either (1) be abused again later in life (by someone else, since abusers tend to look for people like that, and those abused as children can easily fall into the same sort of trap again as adults due to the warped mindset they grew up learning, if they haven’t unlearned it somehow -- with help -- in the meantime), or those who were once abused (2) become abusers themselves -- this is one of the many reasons why this is called a ‘cycle of abuse’. (It is fucking scary, and really screwed up.)

Lex doesn’t seek professional help in the Smallville universe, by-the-by, after being stranded on the island (post-Helen’s failed murder attempt); the sessions are mandated by LuthorCorp for his continued employment. But when [he finally opens up to his psychiatrist after being pushed by her and in effect called out on his bullshit](http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6829); he admits that he needs to seek after real help, and will accept that help from her... but it turns out his psychiatrist isn’t actually trying to help him. [She’s working for Lionel Luthor](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Foster), and trying to help _Lionel_ find [‘the chink in Lex’s armor’](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/ID) that they could exploit (which, by her determination, happens to be the hallucinations he had of Louis when he was delirious with fever on the island, and which persisted for some time after he was back in Smallville). This directly leads to the whole staging of that massive, covered-up, scene in [Shattered](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Shattered) where Lex is basically attacked in the mansion and then comes back with Clark to find everything looking like nothing had happened: Lionel was trying to make Lex think he was hallucinating on a grand scale, _and he had help from Lex’s psychiatrist to do it_. (Things, obviously, go downhill from there, and at the end of the episode Lex ends up in Belle Reeve, with his health and well-being completely controlled by his father, to be manipulated with drugs and so-called ‘therapy’ -- like unnecessary electroshock treatments -- as Lionel sees fit.) So it should be no big surprise to anyone that after he gets out, Lex doesn't try to seek professional mental help ever again.

Lionel is pretty obviously emotionally and mentally abusive to Lex throughout the course of the show in general. (One notable example is when he blackmails, threatens, and buys all of LexCorp’s outstanding voting shares and pulls the Smallville factory out from under Lex, then more-or-less tricks Lex into unearthing his half-brother Lucas, and uses Lucas to maneuver Lex into losing everything… up until that backfires on them all, badly. Can we say ‘controlling, manipulative bastard who loves his mind-games’, anyone?) However, he is also physically abusive towards Lex... at least he is explicitly known to be when Lex is younger. I briefly discuss this in the paragraph on Fracture above, a scene in which Lex is less than nine years old (he still has hair). Also note that in one of Lex’s flashbacks in Memoria, Lionel hits Lex hard enough across the face to send him to the floor, when he finds Julian dead and Lex standing over the crib; he thought Lex had killed Julian, not Lillian, and at the time Lex didn’t dissuade him otherwise. Lex was traumatized enough by everything to block it all out afterwards, for years, until the Summerholt memory experiments. So Lex doesn’t remember Lionel’s reaction clearly until the episode Memoria (3x19). It’s also implied post-Fracture that Chloe’s healing gave him back Memories of his childhood that he hadn’t had access to before (likely the remnants of trauma from the meteor shower in which he lost his hair). So, it’s possible that Lionel only rarely physically abused Lex, and that Lex can’t or doesn’t remember it until after Fracture (7x12). ...That doesn’t seem likely, though, given the rather casual way Lionel abuses him -- like he’s done that sort of thing before and expected it to work. Abusers also don’t just stop abusing the people they’re hurting; physical abusers don’t stop, they escalate. So do mental abusers.

Lionel apologizes to Lex at the end of Memoria for how he’s treated him his whole life (a throwaway apology he doesn’t actually mean), and Lex makes a throwaway comment that Lionel didn’t love him. This implies rather a lot about how Lionel had likely treated him since Julian’s death, when Lex was 11.

Why do I say that Lionel’s ‘apology’ wasn’t real? Well, post-Memoria, after Lex finds out (again, after having been sent to Belle Reeve under false pretenses and having had his brain fried by Lionel to forget this...) about Lionel and Edge and how Lionel had his parents killed for insurance money, Lionel has Lex’s alcohol -- not drugged in a way that should drive him crazy (like last time) -- but _poisoned_ , and it’s clear that Lex only survived by the skin of his teeth, the grace of god, and the exhaustive efforts of his excellent medical staff. (And Lex needed extensive blood filtration every 72 hours to keep him alive, until the Crystal of Fire healed him.) Lionel was out-and-out trying to kill him. So much for turning over a new leaf after finding out his son didn’t murder his baby brother.

There are other times when Lionel tries to kill Lex (e.g., Helen), but this meta-analysis is already getting a little long. (Also, the whole thing’s pretty blasted depressing, since Lex still keeps trying to win his father’s approval, well into the show, and the laundry list of Lionel’s abusive "misbehavior".) I could also go on about how Lionel didn’t actually ‘turn good’ in later seasons, after he gets "infected" by the Crystal of Water and ends up both mentally controlled and restricted by the Jor-El AI in the Fortress, but that’s a bit beside the point. (It’s also a much longer rant.)

Anyway, in summary: Lionel was incredibly emotionally and mentally abusive towards both Lex and Lillian, and was physically abusive when he wanted to get his point across another way (just another tool in the toolbox for getting what he wanted, as it were). Lillian was cold, distant, and the next best thing to uncaring towards Lex; she was emotionally and mentally abusive, but because (presumably) she never physically abused Lex and also protested Lionel’s physical abuse of Lex when she caught him at it, she came across as a saint by comparison.

A further note: Pamela was the closest thing Lex had to a real mother, it was likely mutual, and Lionel made sure that Lex felt betrayed and abandoned by her, by firing her and making her leave in such a way that Lex thought that the relationship he’d had with her was a complete lie.

(And to expand upon my note on Pamela, with something that is far more my own derived opinion than anything directly shown in the episodes: Lionel’s forceful dissolution of Lex’s and Pamela’s relationship likely solidly paved the way for Lex’s strongly-held belief that no-one could love him, and only made stronger with Lionel’s consistent and explicit withholding of love and affection to Lex in the years following. Both of these things were also probably a good chunk of the source of a lot of Lex’s persistent and ever-present anger and frustration, and most likely made worse by a subconscious knowledge that the way his mother treated him -- for instance, by drawing him into the conflicts she had with Lionel due to her own actions like her spying -- was grossly unfair, and wrong of her to do.)

If you’re wondering why nobody ever spoke up about any of the abuse going on, at least when Lex was younger, there’s an explanation for this (one that you may not like any more than I do): the staff at the mansion signed incredibly strict non-disclosure agreements about their time of their service there, and presumably also were restricted from sharing any information about the Luthor family as a part of that. It’s implied a couple times during the show, but [one notable side-effect](http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6829) of this is when Perry White approached Lex at boarding school (Excelsior Prep) and tried to trick Lex into giving him dirt on his father. Going to the kid instead of the help is kind of the last resort, when you’re looking for dirt; the former is incredibly risky, and Perry ended up blackballed by Lionel for it.

And, to take a sidetrip into the reality of abuse, for a moment:

~*~*~*~*~*~

**(You might want to stop now, it gets even less cheery below…)**

~*~*~*~*~*~

...In reality, when people see this sort of abuse going on, they generally don’t get involved. (At best, you’re lucky if a neighbor who lives next door to a physical abuser will call the police; reporting of mental and emotional abuse? Yeah, no. Pretty much doesn’t happen.) A lot of the time, no-one will even call out a mental or emotional abuser on their bad behavior, even if they’re seen abusing their victim in public. The impetus is on the people being abused to leave their abuser, and most people being abused literally can’t or don’t see this as a viable option. (The abusers work on them specifically to push them into this mental state. I’m not going to go into the details on how; there are plenty of websites which talk about this. Google them, if you think you can stand it.) Sometimes the people being abused don’t even realize that anyone _notices_ the abuse, even if they’re not trying to cover it up, in-part because of this lack of response or involvement; sometimes they try to cover it up and not talk about it, either because they’re too embarrassed about it, because they believe they deserve it, because they’re afraid to, or some combination thereof.

I won’t cover the embarrassment one. However, the ‘because I deserve it’ one is what tends to be the thing that has the abused defending the abuser, by-the-way, if you’ve ever wondered why that happens sometimes. Those people have actually been more-or-less convinced into believing that the person only does these things to them ‘because they love them’, and ‘because they are trying to help them become a better person’. This is incredibly screwed up. It still happens. It isn’t a lightswitch. Most sane people, when something goes wrong in a relationship, no matter how big or how small, think that the resulting friction is because of something they did wrong, and they want to do or change something to fix it. Abusers take advantage of that fact, and convince their victims that they need to change themselves. Many of them never say it outright; some do. But they almost all will start with something small. And they keep pushing. They don’t stop. They _literally_ mentally and emotionally bend people all out of shape, to get them to that point.

...And the ‘because they’re afraid to’ one is actually a lot more messed-up than you might think, because there’s the fear that their abuser will punish them (or kill them) if they speak out, but there’s also sometimes the fear that no-one would believe them if they tried to talk to anyone about the abuse, and sometimes even the fear that no-one would support them or help them if they did try to seek help. The latter two instances are very common when emotional and/or mental abuse is occurring (it’s not like there are any physical bruises they can point to, to prove what’s going on…) and, generally it’s hard for someone who’s being abused to try and explain the abuse to someone else. Sometimes the abused can’t think of how they can try to explain to someone else that, when their abuser says such-and-such in that _particular_ way, it makes them feel like shit. This is generally because people aren’t always very good at explaining their emotions in the first place -- like most skills in life, it takes practice -- and usually the abused feels as though they have to justify their emotions and emotional reactions under such circumstances, since they’re the ones putting forth the complaint. One risk in opening up in such a way is the possibility of having their emotions denied -- rather than justified -- by that outside party, e.g., being told that they’re ‘too sensitive’, or similar. Sometimes the abuser does something that makes so little sense, given whatever circumstances the abused and abuser are in at the time, that the person being abused -- who likely believes they have to justify everything they say or do by the time they reach that point -- really doesn’t see why anyone would believe them. One way to put it: if it came to a ‘he-said-she-said’ situation, it would be the abuser’s word against theirs. It will generally not occur to the abused at this point that someone might believe them simply because they said it; in the worst-case, they are so used to having their emotions and thoughts denied, or questioned, or informed to be wrong or false by their abuser that they subconsciously expect that treatment all the time, from everyone. It doesn’t occur to them that, on the whole, people generally _don’t lie about that sort of thing_ , so why _wouldn’t_ any sane individual with half a conscience believe them, or at least listen and check things out?

These latter two instances are also particularly problematic, for reasons I think should be pretty clear to just about anyone: if the person being abused doesn’t believe that situation will change or get any better if they try to leave their abuser… why would they try? (This is why most abuse cycles tend to hit a breaking point only when the person being abused dies (suicides or is killed), or when they leave their abuser -- because they don’t or won’t try to leave until things get _so_ bad that they literally can’t take it anymore. They leave, not because they think things will get better, but because they think that any other situation they’ll find themselves in outside of their abusive relationship can’t possibly be any worse, and they can’t put up with things as they stand anymore.)

That all said -- if you see someone being abused, you should say something to someone, preferably a trusted authority figure who knows what to do about such things or who to contact if intervention looks to be necessary (teachers are one option, a pastor or priest could be another, so can a professional social worker or psychologist friend if you know one). Talking to the abuser likely _will not help_ , especially if they’re the vindictive sort (guess why a lot of people don’t like to get involved, and justify remaining silent by telling themselves, however wrongly, that they’ll only make things worse if they try to do anything at all about what they’re seeing? ...Yeah. You get a gold star.). ‘Calling out’ an abuser effectively in public can actually be pretty difficult to do, and public shame only goes so far (this won’t stop the abuser from abusing the person once they get them alone). If you don’t think you can do it, that’s fine; don’t try.

Conversely, if you say something to the person being abused about the abuse that’s going on, you may very well get shot down, yes. This, sadly, happens a lot. The why is actually pretty straightforward: nobody likes thinking that they might be being taken advantage of, or abused in any way, even (or maybe especially) if it’s true. (If this doesn’t make sense to you, then think how you would feel if someone asked you this directly, out of the blue. Would you take that well, or just be offended at the very idea of it?) In fact, you will almost definitely get shot down immediately if you’re not careful in **what** you say (explicitly asking if they’re being abused will likely not go over very well, if they’ve even thought of the relationship in those terms at all), **how** you say it (do not blame them for the abuse or imply such in any manner), and **when** you say it (they will not want to talk to you if they think their abuser can overhear them, might be hovering nearby, or will otherwise be back soon).

If I had to make a recommendation about what to say to someone you think is being abused, I’d start with something small, like asking them if they feel okay if they’re obviously distressed, or (a less stressful and more gentle way to help them open up) how their day is going. Listening helps a lot. Letting them know that you’re a friendly ear doesn’t mean that they’ll take you up on it right away, of course, or anytime soon, or even at all, but it still helps. The idea that someone will listen _nonjudgmentally_ to them is a powerful one; it will stand out for them, and they _will_ remember it. If nothing else, they will, at some point in the future, remember that someone cared enough about them to notice when they were feeling distressed and down and wanted to listen to them; this will make it more likely that they will talk to someone else later, even if it isn’t you. If they do take you up on it and vent a bit verbally, validate their right to their emotions and their thoughts and their own conclusions. If they ask for your opinion, that can be a bit dangerous, but if you do agree with them then let them know. If you don’t, at least do them the courtesy of not lying to them, especially if agreeing or remaining silent would validate the abuse (in other words, don’t make things any worse). If things go well, you just may become a sounding board for their sanity, of the ‘does this sound crazy to you that s/he did this?’ variety. Helping a person gain proper perspective on the situation is a big deal in emotional and mental abuse cases. (Preaching to them like they’re stupid, not so much. Also, note that if you haven’t ever been abused yourself, you won’t understand it; don’t pretend that you do. Just be quietly thankful that you don’t understand, and hopefully never will. And don’t turn the conversation into one of ‘one-upmanship’. ‘Who has had the worst thing happen to them’ is not a contest you want to win, and you’ll effectively be invalidating the other person’s experiences if you try and inform them that what they’re going through isn’t _nearly_ as bad as… etc. Get the picture? If you’re listening, you’re listening, not sharing your own experiences and effectively trying to drown out the other person’s voice.)

Even if the person isn’t actually being abused, and you’ve misread the situation somehow, you’ve "just" been listening to them. (And you’ve probably made a new friend; congrats! :) So, no harm, no foul.

~*~*~*~*~*~

On a final, somewhat-lighter note (sort-of…): I don’t talk about sexual abuse here, because that’s a totally different can of worms. Luckily, the Smallville universe doesn’t really touch upon that one at all. (Thank god for small miracles, or I’d need more brain-bleach than I likely already do by reading too much slash-fic :-P ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: ...Sorry for the far-fewer quantity of links from the middle-or-so onwards. I can add some more later, if people would like to have them (or would otherwise just like to see me show my work :-P )


	2. Meta Specific to Chapter 3 of Family Stuff!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FYI, these notes are specific to [Chapter 3 of Family Stuff](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3300257/chapters/16784326), and are not what I consider to be general meta. You'll likely be a little lost if you consider this a direct carry-on from the previous chapter of this meta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _So_ , continuing from Chapter 1 / the more general meta in the previous chapter, **-and-** with the background of Chapter 3 of Family Stuff in mind...

That said... Lex's story here is not the whole story -- he is missing key information and as such Lex's reasoning in [chapter 3 of Family Stuff] is not necessarily completely correct, mainly his (likely mis)understanding as to why Pamela Jenkins (his nanny until he was thirteen) acted as she did in certain situations. His reasoning in this chapter does not contradict what he knows in canon at this point; however, later episodes (1x19 Crush) give more information that he doesn't yet know and can't account for here. This is touched upon briefly in the meta piece. I will say this, however: it is unsurprising that Pamela could love Lex and yet still be too afraid to stand up to Lionel for his abuse of Lex. Pamela was clearly abused by Lionel in the series, too, in somewhat more subtle ways than "simple" physical abuse -- though stealing someone's child and forcing them to be put up for adoption is not exactly what I'd necessarily call 'subtle'. Given how Lionel treated Rachel Dunleavy in 2x07 Lineage, and the clear mind games he played with a mentally ill woman while seeming to enjoy doing so... if he did anything similar to Pamela offscreen while Lex was growing up, then it wouldn't be surprising at all that she'd be too afraid to stand up to him. He had all the power: control over Pamela's daughter (Tess Mercer), and control over Lex. He could have easily had Pamela dismissed at any time; Lillian might have objected if he'd tried to do so while she was she still alive, but the ease and rapidity with which Lionel 'disposed of' Pamela the very same day of his wife's death makes it rather clear what level of control he had over her _without_ Lillian's influence around to worry about. With how Pamela acted in the episode, it is very likely that she was telling the truth when she said that Lionel had forced her to leave Lex without a word, that she did in fact love Lex, and all the rest of it.

And, for an even less cheery meta to end on (skip if you want to avoid yet another downer):

Lionel was shown to have physically abused Lex (and Lillian) when Lex was younger. At some point, he stopped doing so (onscreen) in as drastic a manner. Most physical abusers only escalate; they do not stop. However, in the context of this fic and canon, _**it is unsurprising that Lionel might have made a conscious decision to stop openly physically abusing Lex in his teens**_ , as Lex was becoming old enough (and had finally grown big enough) that if he started to fight back he would be able to physically defend himself against Lionel. When this happens (when the kid physically fights back and succeeds in holding their own somewhat), the adult abuser generally either has to double-down (practically kill the kid) or back off (the latter of which tends to happen more with father-son interactions in real-life because the power-tripping abuser just doesn't expect it). If the abuser backs down explicitly because the kid managed to fight them off, the kid ends up mentally internalizing the reality that they can in fact fight back, and the abuser has lost a significant portion of their power and control over them.

It's possible that Lex fought back in the series, but unlikely (and Lex certainly doesn't tend to act like it -- see the fencing match discussion below). Lionel, unfortunately, is portrayed as smart enough in the series to have realized that continuing the physical abuse of his son past a certain age would prompt that 'fight back' response in Lex and lose him Lex's fear; instead Lionel would be smart enough to double-down on the mental and emotional abuse instead before Lex reached that point (forestalling and preventing Lex from receiving the opportunity to be able to come to the realization mentally and emotionally that his father is not this unbeatable larger-than-life figure that he must obey). Lionel then transitions the physical abuse to a different form -- unwelcome touches like those shoulder grabs, and physical bouts like fencing, that he could 'win' by more than just strength over youth.

Note that in 1x03 Hothead, Lionel proposes a fencing match with Lex in what is practically a taunt, and which Lex is pretty clearly worried about -- Lex looks like he isn't sure at all that he can win, and he clearly doesn't want to risk what he's fighting for for the factory in such a bout... but he doesn't seem to see any other way to get what he wants. So he agrees to the bout, and loses, and he caves -- because he doesn't think he can do otherwise ...until he sees both Clark and Lana fighting for what they're trying to do, despite being told 'no', and realizes that maybe he doesn't have to cave in either. (Yay for peer pressure?) And when Lex comes up with a workable plan that doesn't involve decimating the workforce like he'd been ordered to do, instead of congratulating him on his clever bookkeeping and telling him he's proud of his much better solution (what, were you expecting a normal fatherly response from Lionel? hah!), Lionel backs off for the moment, telling Lex he only gets "one chance to defy [him]"...

...and then proceeds to jerk Lex around in other ways instead. Lionel lets Lex walk into a hostage situation with bad information that was practically guaranteed to get Lex killed (and nearly does, but for the grace of Clark) in 1x08 Jitters (Lionel lied to him about the existence of Level 3); then in 1x16 Stray Lionel tries to force Lex to return to the main LuthorCorp branch in Metropolis where he can keep an eye on him (read: neutralize his influence and stunt his growth better); and in 1x21 Tempest Lionel finally closes down the Smallville plant outright with no warning, just because he can, despite the fact that Lex had pulled off the impossible and finally gotten it running in the black (likely just to negate Lex’s success, a blunt way of ‘proving’ to Lex that his ‘victory’ doesn’t matter, that Lex has and had no real power over the fate of the plant). ...And that's just a couple "good" bad examples from the _first_ season of the show.

'Magnificent Bastard', my ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And here's a link back to Chapter 3 of Family Stuff, if you came from there: [link](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3300257/chapters/16784326).


End file.
